Breakpoint

We often hear of folks forced to endure "sensitivity training" for holding opinions everyone did five years ago. But, in an unusual turn of events, a U.S. District court judge has ordered corporate lawyers for Southwest Airlines to undergo training with the Alliance Defending Freedom about the nature and importance of religious liberty. On August 7, a U.S. District Court ruled that Southwest Airlines violated Charlene Carter's rights when they fired her for posting pro-life opinions on her personal social media. The ruling also declared that Southwest notify their flight attendants about protections for their religious views. Southwest did not follow through, and instead notified their flight attendants that the company policy did not violate their religious freedom. To say the least, the judge wasn't happy, ruling that more training was in order and that ADF was the group to provide it. Not surprisingly, Southwest appealed the decision while media outlets feigned disbelief and expressed outrage. Hopefully the inconsistency will be obvious to everyone. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

In her book Live Your Truth and Other Lies: Exposing Popular Deceptions That Make Us Anxious, Exhausted, and Self-Obsessed, apologist Alisa Childers breaks down widespread mantras of culture and their consequences. One of these is a misunderstanding of Jesus' words so common that, for many, it may be the eleventh commandment that supplants the other ten: "You shouldn't judge." Over the last 60 years, studies have confirmed that Americans have become more tolerant of alternative sexual lifestyles, non-traditional beliefs about God, and certain political identifications, such as Communism. According to the most recent State of Theology report from Ligonier Ministries and LifeWay Research, some 56% of self-described evangelicals believe that "God accepts the worship of all religions, including Christianity, Judaism, and Islam." Upon closer examination, this shift has far more to do with losing convictions in these areas than about gaining tolerance. In fact, accepting the "do not judge ethos" has been a primary corrosive agent to those convictions, and this is what Childers addresses in her new book. In addition to identifying the obvious contradiction in saying "it is wrong to judge," which is itself a judgment, she reminds Christians what Jesus' words mean in context. [J]ust after saying, "Judge not," Jesus lets his audience know that when they judge, they should be very careful to make sure their judgment isn't hypocritical. "First take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye," Jesus instructs in verse 5. In other words, don't point out a sin in your brother's or sister's life before you confront the bigger sin in your own. But the whole point is to help your brother or sister take the speck out of their own eye, which requires you to judge that it's there. … If there is still any confusion, just a few verses later, Jesus tells us to recognize wolves, or false teachers, by their fruit (verses 15-16). Again, this requires us to judge whether these teachers are speaking truth or deception. Then, in John 7:24, Jesus couldn't say it more plainly. He directs his listeners to "not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment." The point of these verses, she concludes, is not to prevent moral discernment, but to help believers instead judge "carefully, rightly, humbly, and without hypocrisy." Childers then offers a powerful illustration from her time with ZOEgirl, when her struggle with body image eventually led to a secret eating disorder of binging and purging. On some tour in some town somewhere, I shared a hotel room with one of my bandmates. She is a sweetheart—gentle, deeply intelligent, and thoughtful. … She was also a natural peacemaker, and confrontation did not come easily to her. So when she worked up every last bit of courage to ask me what I was doing in the bathroom, it surprised me. And it also made me angry. To put it lightly, the conversation didn't go well. I not so politely invited her to stop "judging" me and back all the way off. That didn't stop her. … Looking back, am I thankful that my bandmate "judged" me? That she dared confront me about the self-harm I was guilty of? Absolutely! She was the catalyst that first brought the darkness into the light. To this day my eyes mist with tears when I think about how much she loved me to do such a difficult thing. Childers' example not only calls Christians to do similarly difficult but right things, it reveals the consequences of relativism when lived in the real world. What begins as a desire to not judge others turns into the narcissistic demand that no one, under any circumstances, judge us. But that also renders healing and forgiveness impossible. After all, with no way to say that we've been wronged, neither is there means or reason to forgive those who harm us. Any culture that rejects objective morality lacks any way to counter evil. Alisa Childers' book reclaims truth from the empty slogans that dominate our culture and our thinking. This August, for a gift of any amount to the Colson Center, we'll send you a copy of Live Your Truth and Other Lies. Just go to breakpoint.org/give to learn more. This Breakpoint was co-authored by Kasey Leander. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

A feature of life in Colorado is the prevalence of pot. There are dispensaries on virtually every corner, and everywhere I travel I hear a pot joke. Something else my adopted state is becoming known for is the harmful aftereffects of legalized marijuana. According to state statistics, the drug was found in the system of some 42% of teen suicides, a rate nearly twice as much as with alcohol and four times of any other substances. Of course, correlation doesn't mean causation, but it can mean connection. If nearly half of stroke victims were taking the same medicine, would we wonder if there was a link? Why the reluctance to connect the dots here? Marijuana might not cause suicide, but numbers don't lie. It encourages or exacerbates problems that lead down that deadly road, especially for a group at high risk. The link is there for those willing to see it. Since suicide rates have risen every year that it has been legal, we're far past giving the benefit of the doubt. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

Few voluntary associations in American history have had as deep and wide an influence as the Boy Scouts of America. The training ground of soldiers and senators, pastors and presidents, the organization effectively instilled values like trustworthiness, loyalty, courteousness, thrift, bravery, and reverence in many of the over 100 million young men who joined in its over 100-year history. In fact, for much of the 20th century at least, "Scout's honor" was among the highest assurances one could give of their honesty and integrity. However, if the only evidence considered was the Boy Scouts of 2023, it would be hard to imagine that this long and storied history ever took place and that the organization ever helped boys mature into virtuous manhood. Ten years ago, the Boy Scouts of America allowed openly gay members for the first time. Soon thereafter, an avalanche of sexual abuse allegations, many of them decades old, forced the Scouts into bankruptcy and a 2.5-billion-dollar settlement. Since then, the organization has been in membership free fall. This year, for the first time since 2017, the Scouts held their National Jamboree in the hills of West Virginia. Reporter Mike De Socio attended and, writing in The Washington Post, described the shell of an organization he encountered. This year's Jamboree drew only 15,000 scouts compared to 40,000 at the previous Jamboree in 2017. Between 2019 and 2021, the Boy Scouts lost 62% of its membership, and there's no sign of a post-COVID recovery. As Carnegie Mellon's student newspaper put it, the Boy Scouts "is a dying institution." Despite this, De Socio, who identifies himself as gay, praised the progressive palooza the Jamboree has become. Specifically, he touted the pride tent, complete with "LGBTQ Pride flags and a string of multicolored lights, … tables covered with bowls of rainbow bracelets, pronoun stickers and diversity patches" and that a diversity merit badge is now required to become an Eagle Scout. According to De Socio, the blame for the organization's near collapse should fall on the abuse scandal and the pandemic. Certainly, these factors hastened the demise we now witness, but it's as if the author cannot imagine how the Scouts' enthusiastic embrace of LGBT ideology over the last 10 years sealed its fate. In the same period, a Christian organization for boys called Trail Life USA saw a 70% increase in membership. In fact, the pattern matches the long-term dwindling of mainline Protestant denominations. When an organization, whether a church or a youth association like the Boy Scouts, forgets or rejects why it exists in the first place, it soon stops existing. Once liberal mainline churches stopped offering anything distinctly Christian and offered the same progressive, all-accepting, therapeutic talking points as Oprah and NPR, why go to church? Much the same can now be said for the once venerable organization we call the Boy Scouts. The sexual abuse scandal may have fatally undercut the group's claim to trustworthiness and integrity, as well as the perception that they provide a safe and wholesome place for boys to grow into men. However, throwing open the doors to LGBT ideology changed the very nature of the organization. Not only did the Scouts begin (ironically) promoting sterile lifestyles that would deprive the organization of future members, it also became a place where evil is called good and children are herded into life-destroying behavior and beliefs. This not behind closed doors as with the scandals, but proudly in the open, on charter documents, and at Jamborees. By the time the Boy Scouts decided to undermine their name by admitting girls, I imagine most families had already asked themselves, "What's the point?" To be clear, the loss of the Boy Scouts, despite its flaws, is huge. What other institution shepherded generations of boys toward responsibility, self-mastery, and moral living? Our whole society would be a poorer and less trustworthy place had it never existed. I hope that churches and Christian programs like AWANA and groups like Trail Life USA seize the moment and make up for this profound loss. I also hope all organizations learn that they only remain good as long as they remember their purpose. When they succumb to trendy ideologies and the spirit of the age, they not only lead their members astray, they also make themselves unnecessary and, in this case, leave their very necessary work to someone with conviction. This Breakpoint was co-authored by Shane Morris. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

Recently, NBC news shared an article entitled, "Pope says church is open to everyone, including gay people, but has rules." Asked if it was inconsistent for him to say that Christianity was open to "everyone" when some, including gay people, were apparently excluded, Pope Francis replied, "The church is open to everyone but there are laws that regulate life inside the church." To anyone even vaguely familiar with the Roman Catholic Church or Christian teaching throughout history, the only newsworthy item here is that reporters thought it was newsworthy. The rest of us may not have been sure that the Pope would be as forthright as he was. What he said was not an innovation. St. Paul was pretty clear when he described Christians and their sin, "And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God." For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

As if the last few years were not strange enough, the United States Congress recently held hearings on the subject of UFOs. As NBC News reported, numerous claims were made by those called before the subcommittee, including by former military or intelligence personnel. Perhaps the most surprising aspect of this otherwise earth-shattering story was how it has largely been greeted, at least on social media, with a collective "meh." If so much information was kept hush-hush for so many years, why the sudden transparency now? Isn't this just another chapter in red herrings tossed out to distract us from what's "really" going on? As tempting as it is to think of these hearings as an unaired episode of The X-Files, the virtue of stories like this, and of the whole genre of sci-fi, is that they bring up questions about the deeper things of life. Who are we? Are we alone in the universe? What would it mean if we weren't? What makes us special as human beings? Noted sci-fi writer Arthur C. Clarke famously said, "Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying." Religious people are less likely than others to believe that aliens exist. Or, if they think something is "out there," they are less likely to think of extra terrestrials as E.T. as they are to think of them as demons trying to deceive us for one reason or another. On the other hand, those with a materialist outlook tend to see the world as just a "pale blue dot" in the heavens and humanity as nothing more than the consequence of chance and chaos. In fact, it's become almost an article of materialist faith that if we are here, someone else must be too. All of which suggests that there's more to how we view these matters than what we have seen or not seen. For instance, despite being supposedly a planet-wide concern, nearly all UFOs sighted tend to show up in the English-speaking world. Or, as someone on Reddit noted, "they sure love the US." A similar phenomenon can be seen in the variations of "bigfoot" stories, depending on from what region they are. The stories out of the Pacific Northwest tend to resemble a Harry and the Hendersons vibe. Sure, the creature might seem a bit scary but, in the end, they are one with nature, like a kind of extra furry Bill Walton. The stories out of Texas are all about these super aggressive creatures that are ready to fight and kill and steal your children. Tennessee bigfoots, on the other hand, are just downright neighborly, knocking on doors to ask for some garlic. These together suggest it's clear that, even when it comes to urban legends and outer space, the stories we tell ourselves make a big difference in what we see in the world. Anyone who has read C.S. Lewis' Space Trilogy can tell you that the great apologist used his own imagination to tell wonderful stories where very plausible aliens lived and interacted with his human heroes. The inhabitants of Mars and Venus, or as Lewis named them, "Malacandra" and "Perelandra," were fellow creatures born of the artistry and care of the same God we encounter in the Bible. Yet, in one of his last books, he noted the subjective element in people's belief in the extraordinary. Right at the end of his study of the medieval worldview, he wrote: "Fifty years ago, if you had asked an astronomer about "life on other worlds," he was apt to be totally agnostic about it or even stress its improbability. We are now told that in so vast a universe stars that have planets and planets that have inhabitants must occur times without number. Yet no compulsive evidence is to hand. But is it irrelevant that in between the old opinion and the new we have had the vast proliferation of "science fiction" and the beginnings of space-travel in real life?" What we believe about alien life and other mysteries says more about our beliefs, or what Charles Taylor called our "social imaginaries," than it does about their existence. The culture around us affects our view of the world in profound ways. Our worldview is a pair of belief "glasses" that help us understand the nature of reality, but it can also be a kind of blinder, too. This doesn't mean we are completely lost in the fog of our own precognitive assumptions, only that we should follow Francis Schaeffer's advice about checking our presuppositions "after a careful consideration of which worldview is true." This Breakpoint was co-authored by Dr. Timothy D. Padgett. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

Massachusetts is rejecting would-be adoptive parents if those parents are Christian and thus denying a home to children in need, according to a new lawsuit. Mike and Kitty Burke went through all the classes, background checks, and home assessments required to become adoptive parents, and scored highly. Yet, they were rejected because, as state officials wrote in their report, the couple's Christian faith meant they are "not supportive" of kids who identify as LGBTQ. Right now, in Massachusetts more than 1,500 kids are in need of a foster home. Not only do advocates deny biology and sexualize children by suggesting their sexual preferences are their identity, but they also deny kids loving parents as if it is better to not have a home than to be in a home with a religious mom and dad. This is not an isolated incident. A mom in Oregon was also rejected from fostering kids for the same reason. Again, it's the children who are harmed. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

In the 22nd week of surrogate Brittney Pearson's pregnancy, she was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer. Because the necessary treatment could harm the baby, her doctors recommended inducing labor early and allowing the baby to be cared for in neonatal intensive care while she started chemo. However, the gay couple paying Brittney Pearson to serve as their surrogate did not want a premature baby with potential developmental or health problems. They wanted her instead to have an abortion. Pearson offered to put the baby up for adoption, but the men refused because, according to Pearson, they did not want a child who was genetically related to one of them somewhere "out there." According to Pearson, the men threatened both her and her doctors with a lawsuit if she did not abort her child. Because of California's radical surrogacy laws, which allow financiers of a surrogacy arrangement to be granted legal parental rights of the baby before he or she is born, they likely would have prevailed. In an interview with Jennifer Lahl of the Center for Bioethics and Culture, Pearson told her story. Her son was born at 25 weeks of pregnancy, a gestational age that, thanks to advances in maternal medicine, children have survived. Though she has not publicly stated whether her son was killed before or after delivery, or whether he was given or denied the medical treatment a premature baby needs, she has confirmed that her son died the day he was born, which was Father's Day. Though, of course, not every surrogacy contract ends this way, Pearson is not the first surrogate mom pressured to kill her baby by those paying for it. However, it would be a profound mistake to think of hers as a case of "surrogacy gone wrong," as advocates of the practice claim about stories like hers. Each and every moral violation that occurred along the way was not exclusive to Pearson's unique circumstances. Rather, they are violations endemic to surrogacy itself, a practice that denies children the right to their mother and, at times, their father, and denies a mother the right to her own child. Children are treated as products to be purchased and arranged, subject to property laws and other legal realities long used to dehumanize certain individuals. It's jarring to hear these men talk of Brittney Pearson's baby as if he were a lamp ordered off Amazon that was delivered broken. However, it is the surrogacy contracts signed ahead of time that treat human babies as commodities. If it seems like an obvious violation of human rights and God's moral order for two men to demand that a woman have her baby killed, what should we make of the legal contract governing the baby's creation, gestation, and delivery in the first place? If babies are treated like products and pregnancy like the means of production at the beginning of the surrogacy process, ought we not to expect things to be different at the end? Human beings are made in the image and likeness of God. Thus, they should never be treated like any other thing. Like the social research that shows how extended exposure to violent video games and media can desensitize people to actual violence, surrogacy is among those cultural realities that reveal how much our view of children has been desensitized by all that constantly reduces them to "things." As one gay man who sued his employer last year for refusing to pay for him and his husband to hire a surrogate put it, children are just one of the modern "trappings" of "marriage," like a "house, children, [and] 401k." The willful death of Brittney Pearson's son is a tragic, but logical, escalation of the moral errors fundamental to surrogacy. As marriage and family are increasingly deconstructed, reimagined, and replaced in law, the demand for surrogacy will only increase, and more babies will face the same kind of danger as Pearson's baby. If we don't stand up for them, who will? And if we do, it will require standing against this practice, which is fundamentally disordered and always wrong, and not merely against selective cases. This Breakpoint was co-authored by Maria Baer. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

Millions of Americans have stopped going to church creating the biggest social shift in our lifetime. We'll look at the reasons Ohio's Issue 1 failed giving pro-life voters another defeat. And suicide rates in America are at levels not seen since the Great Depression. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

Distressed by the onset of puberty, California teenager Chloe Cole was fast-tracked to a double mastectomy at age 15. Recently, on her 19th birthday, Chloe appeared before Congress, passionately describing the harm of so-called "trans-affirming" medicine, which is anything but. After Chloe's remarks, a mother who had transitioned her 18-year-old daughter told her story. Given a chance to respond, tears filled Chloe's eyes, and she replied to the committee chairman: "I just want to set the record straight that I don't hate her. … In fact, I see my own mother and my own father in her. … That being said, I don't wish for a child to have the same result as I did. … It comes with its own difficulties, and it's not easy. And I hope that her child gets to have a happy and fulfilling adulthood." Without sacrificing truth, Chloe offered love, as well as a reminder to all of us that it is possible to speak the truth in love. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org